Archive: Mon Jan 2015

If you only care for original content or if you’re sick of Christmas then ignore this post.

Last year I posted about the Christmas lights around Rome from an evening walk we took on Christmas Eve. If you don’t remember, or weren’t a reader then, check it out here. That night is one of my favorite memories living here, and ended up being one of the most popular articles on this site (thanks for that). Because of that, I had hoped to post about this year’s lights with just as many pictures.

Unfortunately, the city of Rome had to shuffle the budget this year, and the holiday trimmings suffered. Many streets, some Christmas trees, and the famous Christmas Market at Piazza Navona, all fell victim. I can’t deny that I was bit disappointed, but the big decorations still made an appearance, and some little streets still managed to make the cut.

My favorite this year, again, was Via del Corso. Last year they striped the entire street in a spectrum of rainbow colored lights. In years before that they used to stripe Corso in red, white, and green lights to represent the Italian flag. I thought they would do that again, but they went a step further. Actual Flags!

That’s right, Rome displayed its own version of ‘Fun with Flags,’ and my inner geek rejoiced.

If you are comparing posts, then you may notice that while my Christmas Eve post from last year is nearly deserted, these pictures are much more populated. That’s because I took these on New Year’s Eve about an hour before midnight. It was less crowded than we had anticipated but soooooooooo cold. Thigh freezing, nose running cold. That, videos like this, and people launching fireworks into the crowd, motivated us last minute to spend midnight on the roof of our building.

I can only describe the experience as both spectacular and terrifying. Spectacular because we were watching at least several dozen displays at the same time. It sounded like war, but it looked like fountains of Technicolor fire were sprouting from every direction. Terrifying, because our neighbors were launching their own fireworks on the street below, which meant they were exploding right above our heads. We had to duck more than once.

We tried to film it, but there was some user error, which resulted in sound, but no picture. But I can share a picture of part of the little light show we saw in Piazza Navona earlier that night.